Marina Metevelis a True Blue “Rosie the Riveter” and Promoter and Preserver of Tulsa History, Including Its Famous Tunnels
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Marina Metevelis A true blue “Rosie the Riveter” and promoter and preserver of Tulsa history, including its famous tunnels. Chapter 01 – 0:59 Introduction Announcer: Marina Metevelis answered the call to defend the United States as one of the iconic bandanna-clad Rosie the Riveters. Marina was sixteen when Pearl Harbor was bombed in 1941—she applied for a job at the Wichita aircraft plant where the B-17 Flying Fortresses met the wings that carried them into battle. She became a Rosie the Riveter her senior year in high school. When she was a kid, Marina spent summers in Tulsa visiting her uncles. They were 32nd Degree Masons, and so were the oil barons. During those visits, Marina met all of the oil barons…thus her knowledge of Tulsa’s history and the tunnels in downtown Tulsa, which eventually led her to become a tour guide through those famous tunnels in 1992. She was also a librarian at Tulsa Community College [TCC] and served as Director of The Heritage Center at TCC. Marina was born in Wichita, Kansas in 1924. But her story actually begins in Greece which she talks about in her oral history interview on VoicesofOklahoma.com. Chapter 02 – 4:18 Coming to America John Erling: My name is John Erling and today’s date is October 20, 2011. Marina, would you state your full name, please. Marina Metevelis: Marina Ann Metevelis. JE: Your date of birth and your present age? MM: March 25, ’24, and I’m eighty-seven years old. JE: Where are we recording this interview? MM: We are recording in the Heritage Center at Northeast Campus of Tulsa Community College. MARINA METEVELIS 2 JE: What is your title here? MM: Director of the Heritage Center, which is the college historic collection. JE: Where were you born? MM: I was born in Wichita, Kansas. JE: Your mother’s name? Maiden name? MM: Mother’s maiden name is Anna Elaine Pomidon. She was born in Turkey. JE: How did she make her way to the United States. MM: She and her baby sister came as French tourists because her brother was here in the States and didn’t want them coming through Ellis Island as immigrants. JE: Why? MM: Because they did not know English, for one thing. They had just gone through the 1918 influenza. They had just lost their mother, their older sister, and her little twin girls, because they were living in Piraeus, which is the port of Athens, Greece. And because her brother Nicholas was here. He was telling my future father, “I can’t bring my sisters here and have them come through Ellis Island. It will just scare them to death. How can I get them over here?: So my father said, “We’ll go see a lawyer and see if he can work out a solution for your problem.” My father was a friend of Harry Truman, and Harry Truman, at the time, was attending the University of Kansas City, along with my father. My father was taking small business classes and Truman was taking political science because he was going to go into politics. But Nicholas paid a judge five hundred dollars to get a permit to have his two sisters come as tourists on the French ship. I have their passports, they’re all in French. JE: Hmm (thoughtful sound). MM: And that’s how they got their Social Security benefits and all, because I took their passports to the bank and translated the French so they would know their names and birth dates and all. And that’s how they got their Social Security. JE: Your father’s name? MM: His name was Augustus Kochfein. And because the KKK was throwing bricks through his store window in Wichita he went to court and had his name changed to a Greek name because his family had settled in Corinth, Greece, for years and years. Because they were all agrarians from northern Germany and they wanted to farm. The homes there are built up in the mountains because they farm down in the valleys. They graduate from high school, they’re fifteen. And there was an uncle who had been going to America and coming back and getting the young boys and bringing them to America to learn business and how to have vocations and not be goat farmers back in Greece. MARINA METEVELIS 3 So Dad changed his name. He had to have not a German name, so he changed it to Constantine—it was Augustus, they called him Gus, but he changed it to Constantine and instead of Blafaus it was Balafas, B-a-l-a-f-a-s, so it didn’t have the German name. There were two families that migrated from Germany to Greece, settled in Corinth. One was the Kochfein family and the other one was the Blafaus family. JE: So was he of Greek descent? MM: Well, yes, because they settled in Greece so they were marrying Greek girls. And his mother was a Greek lady. Grandmother was a Greek lady. JE: How did he come here to the United States? MM: He came as an immigrant in 1905. And he was only about seventeen years old when he came. JE: What did your father do for a living in Wichita? MM: He settled in Kansas City because that’s where Uncle Mike Conemenos was bringing all the boys, from the villages. And he learned a trade. He became a shoe repairman. He said, “I’m Gus the Cobbler.” Chapter 03 – 4:14 Harry Truman Marina Metevelis: After he learned the shoe repair trade he had a shop in the Muehlebach Hotel. And next door to the hotel Harry Truman and Harry Levi had this little haberdashery shop. In the afternoons, my dad and Harry Truman would be in the Muehlebach Hotel coffee shop having coffee and shooting the breeze and discussing the affairs of the day. Truman had already been to war and come back. My dad was going to war but Armistice was declared so he didn’t go across the big pond, as they said back then. So Harry was telling my dad, “You know, I think I’m going to go into politics. I’ve done everything there is to do. I’ve married Bess, we’re living in an upstairs bedroom in her mother’s house in Independence. All I owned in my life is an old black Buick. And I’ve got to do something to make some money.” My dad told Harry, “There’s no way you can be a politician.” And Harry Truman said, “Why do you say that?” He says, “Well, for one thing, you’re too damn honest.” (laughs) Harry said, “Well, I’ve got to try it.” When Harry went into politics he started out as a county judge, then he was a commissioner, then he ran as lieutenant governor. He made governor of Missouri and the MARINA METEVELIS 4 next thing you know, he was the Vice President. And Roosevelt died and Harry Truman became President. When he was sworn in as President, he sent my dad a telegram, and he said, “Well, I made it clear to the top, Gus. When you come to DC, look me up. I’ll have you a room in the White House.” And guess what? When my brother was killed on Iwo Jima he was brought back to be buried at Fort Leavenworth. After World War II there was just hardly any hotel rooms or any place to stay when you went somewhere. My dad, my mom, and my sister and I all went to Kansas City to meet the relatives and go to Fort Leavenworth for my brother’s service. Dad said, “I know where we can stay.” So he called up Harry Truman’s secretary, and he says, “Oh, by all means, you’re all going to stay in the suite. Just go on up to Harry’s room.” John Erling: In? MM: The Presidential Suite in the top floor of the Muehlebach Hotel in Kansas City. So my mom, my sister, and I slept in Truman’s bed. My dad slept on a couch in the living room. JE: Oh, yeah. MM: So I tell people, “I slept in Truman’s bed.” And they go, “Was he in it?” And I went, “Now wait a minute. (laughing) Just a minute.” He was in the Blair House, he wasn’t even in the White House because at that time they were redoing the White House and they were in the Blair House. JE: Do you have recollections of seeing Harry Truman and being around him? Tell us. MM: He was a small man, oh, a real natty dresser. He always wore three-piece suits, always had the best. He was an impeccable dresser. One thing that a lot of people didn’t know was he could cuss (laughing) a mile a minute, but he was the perfect gentleman in front of ladies. You couldn’t ask for a nicer more compassionate man. JE: Were you ever in his clothing store? MM: No. See, after a while the Muehlebach Hotel closed down. It was shut down for quite a while and they didn’t really restore it until just about fifteen years ago. JE: So his clothing store was in that hotel? MM: Yes. JE: On the main floor, obviously. MM: Uh-huh (affirmative). Yes. And Dad’s little shoe repair shop was around the corner. So he knew Harry, and Uncle Mike that would go over and bring the boys over to learn trades MARINA METEVELIS 5 and set them up in business, owned the hotel coffee shop, but he was always traveling.